SEOUL (MNI) – Bank of France Governor and European Central Bank
Governing Council member Christian Noyer lashed out Tuesday at credit
rating agencies and the role that they have played in Europe’s current
fiscal crisis.
Noyer said that decisions taken by the credit rating agencies to
downgrade the sovereign debt of Eurozone member states such as Greece,
Portugal or Spain could have been taken “three, six or even nine months
before.”
“We now fully realize that the comparative advantage of credit
rating agencies to assess sovereign risk is equal to zero or is maybe
negative,” he told a Bank of Korea conference here.
“The rating agencies are not giving information to the markets but
are taking information from the markets. They aren’t sending the signals
from certain points of time when they should be warranted and are
(instead) sending it too late and increasing the problems.”
He said that the present situation with credit ratings agencies is
“unsatisfactory.”
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